Whale, I have given you what you wish to get-my good harpoon.Please
hold it with your stronghands.... Whale, tow me to the beach of my village,
for when you come ashore there, young men will cover your great body with
bluebill duck feathers, and the down of the great eagle. -MAKAH TRIBAL SONG
HUMAN FACESAND A KILLERWHALE, CARVEDUNTOLD CENTURIESAGO, MARKA ROCKNEAR OZETTE.
SA MAKAH VILLAGE IN 1491
When I was a girl, I often wondered about my ancestors. I lived then, as now,
in the village of Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula in the northwest corner of
Washington State, where the sea and the forest surround us. I knew that in
times past the most powerful men in our Makah tribe were whalers. My great
grandfather Wilson Parker was a whaler, as were his father and grandfather.
Stories of the rituals that had empowered them filled my childhood.
But growing up in the 1960s, I never saw a harpoon, or a lance, or a buoy
made of the skin of a hair seal. The last whale hunt took place in 1913, and the
hunters' gear was packed away.
And then, as if in answer to a prayer, the past returned. In early January
1970, Pacific storm surf began to expose wondrous things at the abandoned
BY MARIA PARKER PASCUA
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LYNN JOHNSON
BLACK STAR
PAINTINGS BY RICHARD SCHLECHT